


of all the comrades that 'ere I've had

by dustofwarfare



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Post canon, royal tombs, there's humor!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 01:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14759660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare
Summary: Prompto closes his eyes and breathes, dashing angrily at the tears that no amount of blinking will keep from falling. “I think his tomb shouldn’t only be about how he died. It should be about how he lived, too.”Prompto wants to make sure Noctis's tomb isn't just fit for a king -- but for his best friend, too.





	of all the comrades that 'ere I've had

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @marmolita for beta'ing this! (Me: "Hey, can you beta this sad thing about Noctis's royal tomb??") 
> 
> Title from the song "The Parting Glass," because why not cry about this game forever?

 

_But since it falls unto my lot_

_That I should rise and you should not  
_

_I'll gently rise and I'll softly call  
_

_Good night and joy be with you all_

 

Six months after the light returns, they finally meet to discuss his tomb.

Prompto, Ignis and Gladio sit around a table in one of the conference rooms in the Citadel, cleaned and hastily refurbished for the endless meetings necessary to rebuild a city.

The three of them don’t see each other all that often, as busy as they are trying to rebuild the city. Ignis is, of course, in charge of most every administrative aspect of the provisional government. Gladio, without a king to protect or an army to train, spends most of his time working directly with the contractors and construction workers who are clearing away the rubble left from the Fall and a decade of Night. It seems an odd choice for an elite warrior, but Prompto thinks the physicality of the work, and being outside in the new-brought sun, is good for Gladio.

Prompto does what he’s always done – he shoots things. Sometimes it’s _literally,_ meaning he takes out packs of wild animals that have made homes in some sectors of the city, but most of the time he shoots photographs. Mostly for engineering purposes, but he has a few ideas about publishing a book of photographs documenting the city’s slow, careful rebirth.

Part of Prompto likes that he gets to do something he loves, in this new world.  

Part of him never wants to see a camera again. It reminds him too much of a road trip beneath the bright sun that hadn’t yet fallen beneath the horizon, of days spent on chocobo-back and nights spent around the fire, the cool blue glow of haven lights keeping them safe.

Prompto didn’t take many pictures during the Night. He was too busy trying to survive, and help others do the same, to spend time fucking around with his camera. And eternal night didn’t make for very many photo opportunities anyway. Most of the time, the only thing he did with his camera was look back at pictures he’d taken before the sun went away, so he could remember what daylight looked like.

But now he gets up in the morning and makes his way to the city proper, and he takes pictures and talks to those who are slowly making their way back to the home they’d thought forever lost. He always has a smile for those he meets, who say his name in reverential tones that always make him blush. He didn’t really do anything. Not like Noctis.

At night all his smiles fall away, and that’s familiar enough to be oddly comforting.

When he does see Gladio and Ignis, it’s for a hurried meal or a meeting, but it’s more than he saw them during the long Night when they were too valuable as hunters to stay in one place together. But at least they still had hope, back then, that Noctis would return.

Now, all they have are plans for his tomb.

Two architects were selected to provide the initial design, and their sense of reverence and respect for the project is evident in the schematics they lay out on the table. They leave with a bow, though there is no reason for it – no one here is royalty, not anymore. The last King of Lucis is enshrouded in linen and a plain wooden casket, waiting to be transferred to a more appropriate final resting place.

The hush in the room is almost oppressive as they look at the drawings. Ignis clears his throat and Prompto exchanges a guilty glance with Gladio – Ignis is so competent at everything, it’s hard to remember sometimes that he can’t see.

“Sorry, Iggy,” Prompto says, flushing a little. “It’s, uh. It’s nice.” He stares at the schematics. He can’t quite make himself understand what he’s looking at. _A tomb. A royal tomb. Like all those we visited when Noctis was building his armiger. But this one. This one is for_ him.

“Wonderful,” Iggy says, dry as ever. “A bit more information wouldn’t be amiss, Prompto. If you wouldn’t mind.”

Prompto looks at Gladio, who shrugs. “You’re the one who’s good with art stuff.” His dark hair is pulled back, his face a little sunburned. Prompto almost forgot sunburn was a thing.

“It’s very, ah.” Prompto stares at the pictures. He’s not sure that being a photographer means he’s good at relaying the layout of a proposed royal tomb, but he’ll give it a shot. “Um. Tomb…like.”

“Prompto,” Ignis says, gently. “I know this is difficult.”  

Right. Prompto clears his throat and focuses on the schematics, then describes in detail what he sees.

They’d decided off the bat not to put the tomb underground. They want this to be accessible to as many people as possible, who will want to pay their respects. And very few people emerged from the Night unscathed. The daemons are gone, but they left their mark on the population in the missing limbs and scars and aches that won’t ever go away.

The tomb will be located up on the rise facing Insomnia – where the four of them stood in the rain and watched the smoke rise from the city, shocked and horrified. Noctis, barely keeping it together as he spoke to Cor on the phone.

The tomb is open-facing toward the east, so it will be flooded with light. Only fitting.

Prompto describes the iconography on the outside frieze of the tomb, which is a starburst and a sun, rays of light emanating from both. Inside, there are similar images throughout – starbursts, suns, rings of stars.

The sarcophagus itself, of course, is Noctis with his arms crossed, the Sword of the Father grasped eternally between his hands. There’s a fountain outside, benches for visitors to rest, and some plaques.

Ignis is the first to speak. “That sounds,” he says quietly, “like a fitting tomb for the King of Light.”

“It’s – yeah,” Gladio says, his own voice hushed. “Very regal.”

“Worthy of his sacrifice, and a fine tribute,” says Ignis. “I think he would – like it. That it will be open, and easy to visit.”

Prompto shakes his head, unable to agree. He stares at the tomb, at the figure of Noctis carved into stone holding his sword. It’s Noctis as he was when he came out of the crystal – hair long, the beard, looking so much like Regis.

And it’s – it’s all _wrong._

He remembers, suddenly, one of the last tombs they visited before they went to Altissia. The Sword of the Amazing, or the Cleaver of the Awesome, or whatever the fuck it was that time, he’s lost track of their names.

This particular tomb had been a difficult one to find, hidden at the end of the usual labyrinthine caverns full of daemons and slick rocks. They’d been exhausted and hungry and dirty, and after Noct had done his thing with the royal arm, Prompto had broken the silence and said, “So, hey, do Crownsguardsmen get fancy tombs, too?”

“Hell, no,” Gladio answered, with the sort of smirk he’d still worn back then, when he was twenty-three and brash, before the Blademaster and Altissia and Ardyn. “The King’s Shield, though. We definitely do.” The smirk faded a bit. Gladio must have been thinking of his father, fallen alongside his king in Insomnia.

Prompto, as usual wanting to lighten the mood, turned to Noctis. “Hey, you’re the king. Can’t you make sure me and Iggy get one of these bad boys?”

“Sure,” Noctis said, a tired smile cutting through the grime on his face. “When we take back Insomnia, I’ll make sure it’s the first thing I do. Right I after I outlaw dirt. And mud. Ugh.”

“Good,” Prompto pointed to the sarcophagus of king-whoever. “But like, I don’t want to be laying down with my arms crossed like that, okay? Make sure I’m doing something cool. Crouching and snapping a picture with my camera, maybe.” Prompto laughed.  “You can call it the Camera of the Intrepid, or something.”

“Heh,” Gladio laughed. “I think it should be you tripping over your own feet and trying not to drop it. Camera of the Clumsy.”

“Hey!” Prompto exclaimed, but that was pretty funny. “Iggy’s can be him cooking. Knife of the Gourmand, yeah? Gladio, what’ll you be doing?”

“Rolling my eyes at you, probably.”

“Gladio the Unimpressed,” Prompto quipped. “Sitting in a camp chair, eating Cup Noodle.”

“Make sure I’m fishing on mine,” Noctis said. “Or playing King’s Knight.”

“No way. Noctis the Sleepy will totally be taking a nap,” Gladio said, elbowing Noctis. “And Iggy's will be him lecturing you about vegetables.”

“Ignis the Tenacious,” said Prompto, wiping grime and monster-blood out of his eyes.

“Indeed,” Ignis drawled. They’d all laughed, the sound echoing through the stone cavern.

If they’d only known.

Thinking of that conversation makes Prompto say, hesitantly, “You guys remember when we talked about this? About Iggy with his cooking knives, and me with my camera, and Gladio with Cup Noodle? And Noct said, he _said_ , he wanted to be fishing in his tomb. He said that, you guys.”

Ignis’s smile is fleeting but genuine. “I do recall that conversation, yes. That was a lighthearted moment and it was certainly needed at the time.” He clears his throat. “But you must understand, Prompto. This…this isn’t a royal tomb hidden away from the world. This is intended as a place for people to visit and pay their respects to the King of Light. To venerate the sacrifice he made, so that we could all live again in the light.” Ignis’s voice goes soft at the end.

Prompto gets that, he _does_ . But he can’t help himself. “But it’s – it’s still _Noct_ ,” he says, a lump in his throat. “Look, I know that people are gonna come to the tomb to say – to say thank you to him.” Prompto blinks his eyes quickly, trying to clear them. “And they should. But they should know he wasn’t – he wasn’t just some sacrifice. He was the king, yeah, but he was also a _person_. And if he died so we could all live, then…I think – I think --”

Prompto closes his eyes and breathes, dashing angrily at the tears that no amount of blinking will keep from falling. “I think his tomb shouldn’t only be about how he died. It should be about how he lived, too.” He stares hard at his hands, fisted on the table, and tries to get a hold of his emotions.

Ignis reaches out and finds Prompto’s hand in one of his. “You are right, Prompto. He was more than just a king. He was our friend. I think perhaps…in some ways, it is easier to think of building a tomb for the King of Light, than it is for – for –” Ignis takes a deep breath. “For Noctis.”

“So we make this a tomb for Noct. _And_ the king. ‘Cause I think – I think he’d really like that sunburst thing, on the front of the tomb. Definitely. But there should be something of _him_ in there, too. You know?”  

“He’ll bitch about all that light waking him up,” Gladio says, his voice caught somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Maybe we should get him some curtains.”

“He is welcome to file a complaint when we see him again,” Ignis says. There are tears on his face, but he smiles. “Perhaps I should add some images of vegetables to the walls. So he’ll finally be unable to escape them.”

Gladio makes the laugh-sob noise again. “ _Iggy_.”

“I’ll put his high score from our favorite arcade game on one wall,” Prompto says. He, too, is caught between laughter and tears. “….right below mine, which was always higher.”

“I’ll have them inscribe _stop pulling on the line, Noct_ , so he remembers all my important fishing advice.” Gladio wipes at his eyes. “Ah, Gods. I miss him. Not just my king. My _friend_.”

“Yeah,” Prompto says, and he’s given up trying to smile anymore through his tears. “Me, too. I miss him every day.”

“I think we won’t ever stop.” Ignis, of course, uses a handkerchief to wipe at his tears. “And I think that is as it should be. He is worth missing.”

“Gods.” Prompto gives an ugly sniff, his nose all stuffy like it gets when he cries. “Can you just imagine him, though. In the Afterlife. Boring Luna about fishing.”

“Yup,” Gladio says. He glances upward. “Tell him not to pull on the line, Luna. Someone has to.”

“Maybe the fish are easier to catch,” Prompto says, then, “Nah. He’d hate that. They’d have to be at least _kinda_ hard. Remember when he caught that one, Gladio, the _liege of the lake_?”

“Godsdamn it, he went through _six lines_. I had to sell that guy at the Vesperpool a pair of Iggy’s old daggers to buy him some more.”

“So _that’s_ where those went,” Ignis says.

Prompto laughs helplessly and wipes at his eyes. “Okay, so. We’re gonna make this less royal tomb, more…memorial for Noct, right?”

“That’s right,” Gladio says.

“Indeed,” says Ignis.

“Then we better get started.” Prompto grabs a pencil. “Let’s get the architects back in here.”

***

It takes two years before it’s finished.

The night before it opens to the public, there is a private ceremony where the simple casket containing the king’s body is laid to rest in the newly-finished stone sarcophagus.

The sarcophagus is mostly the same as the original design, with Noctis looking regal and sleepy, since that’s just about as fitting a tribute as any. Just as in death, his hands are clasped around the hilt of the Sword of the Father.

But there is also a fishing rod positioned at Noctis’s right, and a chocobo whistle peeks out of the pocket of his royal raiment. On the very edge of the lid is engraved a small square design, made to look like the app from _King’s Knight._

The major changes are in the interior of the tomb, and the imagery on the walls.

Instead of the highly symbolic images of the original design, there are more personal touches. A beautiful rendition of the Vesperpool takes up one whole wall, rendered in color through painstakingly placed glass mosaic tiles. Including a grassy area and a grove of trees, under which repose four chocobos – and two dogs, frolicking in a field of sylleblossoms.

The glass mosaic extends to the top of the tomb, and in the sky, the sun and moon are shown next to each other in perfect, eternal harmony.

But Prompto’s favorite part is the photography display.

That part took a while to make work, because printed photographs aren’t designed to withstand the elements. Especially copies, as these are, since not even Noct’s eternal resting place will get Prompto to part with the originals. Eventually they figured out how to display them beneath a sheet of thin, resilient plexiglass, and the display shows every picture from their road trip.

All the photos save one – the one that Noctis took with him into the throne room that final night, the only one for which Prompto has no copy. Prompto remembers taking the photo and tucking it into Noctis’s suit pocket when they took him down from the throne, after it was all over. As far as Prompto knows the photograph is still there, resting against Noct’s quiet heart.

There are LED lights around the photo wall, and they are solar-charged during the day when the sun shines in so that at night, even in the dark, you can still see the photographs.

_You are what got us through the night, Noct. Your friendship, and our faith that you would come back. And you did._

It’s not the most traditional royal tomb. But Prompto thinks that Noct would like it. Definitely the photographs, even if he included a few of Noctis falling off his chocobo. But there’s also one of Gladio pinned by a voretooth, Ignis chasing a chocobo who stole his glasses, and one of Prompto’s startled face, when Gladio jumped out from behind a statue in a cave and scared him half to death.

The last picture in the display is the four of them around the campfire before they set out for Insomnia. It’s the hardest to look at, knowing that Noctis knew what awaited him in the Crown City.

They spend some time in the tomb after Noct’s interment, describing it all for Ignis, talking in quiet voices about the man whose loss they will never fully get over. But if tombs are for the living to remember the dead, then Prompto thinks this is absolutely how he wants to remember Noctis. King of Lucis, Savior of Eos, and the guy who used to throw his controller in a fit of pique when he rage quit a video game.

The inscription on the sarcophagus is simple. It reads:

_Here lies_

_Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV_

_Last King of Lucis_

_Loyal and Beloved Friend_

When they leave, Prompto is surprised to see a crowd near the entrance and stretching back farther than he can see. The tomb won’t be open to the public until morning, but there are hundreds of people, if not more, already gathered. They are quiet, standing in groups or alone, holding flowers and small little votive candles.

Waiting through the night, so they can pay their respects at dawn to the king who brought it back.

***

When he gets back to his room in the Citadel, Prompto takes a box out of the drawer of his bedside table.

In it, there’s the original photograph of the four of them from that last campfire. He has made copies of this for Ignis and Gladio, as well as for the wall in Noct’s tomb. He places the photo gently on the table, then turns his attention back to the box.

There are two other things in it. An old charger, and the one thing he’d asked to have of Noct’s. His phone.

Prompto plugs in the charger, then connects it to Noctis’s phone. It takes a while for it to charge, and for a moment he realizes he’s not breathing, thinking it might be broken or too-long dead. But eventually it boots up, and he draws Noct’s unlock pattern with a shaking finger – Noct showed it to him in high school and he apparently never changed it.

Prompto’s never had the courage to try and turn the phone on before now. It takes it a long time to boot up, and there no fewer than 117 messages – most of which are from Prompto, rambly things he sent during the ten years Noctis was gone. He used to send them, just in _case_ somehow Noct was getting cell service in the Crystal, but mostly just for himself.

They were all some variation of _I miss you and I hope you’re okay_ , and it makes him feel a little silly to read over them since he hadn’t _really_ thought Noctis would be able to answer.

The last one, though, makes him smile. It just says, _You up for some King’s Knight?_

He almost sends himself a reply from Noctis’s phone that says _sure I’m game_ , but that seems like it might be a little too much. He’s not sure his heart could handle seeing the notification, even if he knows he’s the one who sent it.

Noctis doesn’t have a lot on his phone – a couple pictures from before they left Insomnia that Prompto isn’t sure he’s in the right headspace to look at, and some apps that he barely used. Contacts, but Prompto has all the same ones.

He navigates to the _King’s Knight_ icon and taps on it.  

“So,” Prompto says, smiling through his tears as the game’s familiar music starts. “If I fuck up all your stats, will you haunt me? ‘Cause it’d be worth it, dude.” He laughs, the sound rusty. “You do have ten years of daily rewards and upgrades I can collect, so maybe I can get through that last dungeon we never managed to beat.”

It’s not as good as having Noct there to play the game with him, of course, but…hey. It’s something.

“Okay, buddy,” Prompto says, and settles back against the pillows. “Let’s do this.” His hands are still shaking. He thinks about the photo wall in Noct’s tomb, imagines the people who were lined up and waiting to visit. He thinks about them looking at the pictures, imagining the solemn visage depicted on the sarcophagus as the dark-haired young man grinning on a bench next to the creepy statue of Kenny Crow. He knows they can’t ever know him like Prompto did, or Ignis, or Gladio.

But he’s glad they’ll see another side of him. The dorky side. The one Prompto misses like a drowning man misses breathing.

_You were always so much more than a prince to me. You were my best friend. You always will be._

Through his tears, Prompto navigates to the dungeon that had been giving them fits. He barely remembers how to play, and he _does_ fuck up Noctis’s stats for a few minutes – oops – before muscle memory takes over.

He doesn’t beat the dungeon. He tries and tries – and gods, why is it so easy to blow through _ten years_ of accumulated status upgrades in like, two hours? – but to no avail. He yawns, realizing how tired he is. It’s almost dawn. He’s supposed to meet Iggy and Gladio for breakfast. They’re going to plan their third annual camping trip, the one they started taking on the anniversary of Noctis’s death, and this time they’re going to the Vesperpool.

“We’ll get ‘em tomorrow night, buddy,” Prompto says, and yawns. He places the phone carefully on the table, making sure it is still connected to his old charger. The photograph stares up at him, four somber faces illuminated by the glow of that last, final fire. He’ll get a frame for it, tomorrow. It’s time.

In the morning, the light will spill through his window, warm and bright.

 


End file.
